‘Political risk’

Independent: What have the last few weeks been like since the environmental report vote?

Don Hansen: Fine. It’s really just a matter now of waiting for the deal points to get followed up on and the agreements to get released. As soon as that comes out, I would say that the deal’s all been pretty put together. The e-mails and the rhetoric really dropped off after the [environmental report] vote.

Independent: How do you respond to those who say the vote went down the lines of council members who support corporate developers vs. those who support the people?

Hansen: That’s ridiculous, there’s no such thing. There are elements in the community that want to believe that council members are controlled or somehow we’re beholden to someone. I’m beholden to the voters and that’s it. There are [council members] that are a little more focused on the business of the city or higher on their priority list are other issues, and maybe it falls along those lines.

Independent: How are the negotiations between the city and Poseidon going?

Hansen: I hear it’s going fine and all the things have been hammered out. Now I just think it’s attorney arm-wrestling.

Independent: Doesn’t this whole deal put you in a strange position? If you’re having city staff negotiate this agreement and it gets voted down, not only are you voting against the project, you’re voting against your own staff?

Hansen: Yeah, but I think at least for me, I’ve given pretty clear direction on where it needs to be. If I’m even going to consider it, it’s got to have these elements.

Independent: It almost seems like your setting yourself up. If you get everything you ask for, then you’ll have to approve it.

Hansen: I would think so if it goes down that way, but if staff comes back and says, “Hey, we wanted this, we tried to negotiate it and it’s not happening,” then that has to come into some serious consideration.

Independent: What do you think about the Costa Mesa’s decision to vote against the pipeline?

Hansen: That’s way premature. Costa Mesa is in an easy position right now. They’re saying, “We’re getting nothing.” When Poseidon gets to Costa Mesa, it won’t be nothing. They don’t even have an application in.

Independent: Is the southeast over-industrialized?

Hansen: I wouldn’t say it is over-industrialized, in as much as there is room for improvement. For me, it really starts with Ascon and moving forward with this cleanup effort. No one’s happy with AES, but AES isn’t going anywhere. The notion that Poseidon enshrines AES is false.

Independent: Why do you say that?

Hansen: The people that are making that argument, it’s like they’re running a giant extension chord out of the power plant and plugging it into Poseidon. That’s not what’s happening. AES is subject to its own environmental requirements and have to satisfy them no matter what. If they can’t satisfy them and it goes away, Poseidon can operate at a fraction of the intake volume and velocity that AES is currently working with.

Independent: But at the last study session, a representative from AES said that if his company’s waiver expired and AES had to meet new environmental requirements, they would likely have to make some sort of expansion into land Poseidon plans to lease.

Hansen: Right. However, with that said, they’re talking about the elimination of single-pass cooling, which [means] they would then have to build a cooling tower. What we’re getting in this Poseidon debate are various stakeholders and interest groups coming into play. The anti-single-pass cooling people don’t even really live in the neighborhood. They’re from state or regional groups that are actively lobbying on this issue. So the neighbors who are against it are getting blended with all these different activists, and the result is that they pick and choose each other’s arguments to help their own points. That’s where it’s getting confusing, because you have to drill into what’s the core reason this person is against [Poseidon].

Independent: If this project gets approved, can you still say you’re a representative of the southeast?

Hansen: Yes, because I’ve talked to plenty of people in the southeast that are just fine with it. In the beginning, you’re getting a lot of vocal opponents that do come from that area, but a lot of these people are vocal opponents to just about everything.

Independent: Do you think Poseidon will affect the next election?

Hansen: I don’t think it will affect it that much, unless the opposition does a bang-up job of maintaining public outreach and outrage. Maybe if I vote for it, I may be most in jeopardy because three years from now, when they’re digging up the streets, I have to answer for it. So maybe I’m taking the biggest political risk if I chose to support it. But the opposition would have to really work hard to continue to keep it in the public eye. It’s difficult to maintain the attention of people on local issues. It just goes in spurts. Today it’s Poseidon; tomorrow I’m thinking about how many soccer games I have to get my kids too, how I’m going to pay my bills. We’re working on ways at the council to keep people more informed, and it’s hard. It takes a lot of time and lot of effort.20051208ir3v22knPHOTOS BY WENDI KAMINSKI / INDEPENDENT(LA)Huntington Beach Councilman Don Hansen talks with the Independent’s Dave Brooks during an interview at Cafe La Luna on Dec. 2.